


Today You Are Orange

by covertCalligrapher



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:45:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/covertCalligrapher/pseuds/covertCalligrapher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little oneshot from Davesprite's perspective. Being a sprite and everything, you know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Today You Are Orange

 

Today, you are orange. Some time ago, you were the same as the Alpha Dave, a bright red covered with shades, seeing everything in grayed-out tones, washing out the colour _from_ everything.

 

Now, you are orange and feathered. A sense of duty mixed with the want to not feel doomed, even though you know you are. The hole in your middle healed with the missing wing, but you still can't fly. John was a hero, and now he's dead, so what does that speak for you? You're the not the hero, and you never will be, so why bother to keep going? You're still alive and everyone else from your timeline died, so why bother? Why are you the last one to be left alive when you fucked up so badly?

 

Your Rose degenerated into the mother she claimed to hate so much, drinking away herself until there was nothing left and your timeline collapsed in on itself. John taking flying to his own end, burning brightly until there was nothing left and your timeline collapsed in on itself. Jade died before she even got a chance to see snow, experience winter, everything ending for her until your timeline collapsed in on itself.

 

You, _their Dave_ , you're not him anymore. You're Davesprite. You fought and battled and prototyped and wanted to keep going where your friends could not. You went so far back, you checked yourself before you wrecked yourself; _everyone._ You couldn't deal with it, when could you ever deal with it? You didn't think you could be friends with them the way you had been friends with your own. Your time was dead and theirs was so alive, it could get sick.

 

They weren't the same, you were never going to see _your_ John, or _your_ Jade, or _your_ Rose. They were gone, in the dreambubbles. To not be the one to live, to be the one to die, it wasn't fair. You wanted a modicum of happiness, but there's none to be found in this game. You did a fucking acrobatic pirouette into the sprite and stopped everything from turning into more shit than everyone could handle. And yet, in the moment you became Davesprite, you knew you weren't going to see the game end. You became part of it, and to beat the game was to beat you.

 

You talked to Jadesprite about this. She wasn't your Jade, either. But she knew what it was to feel dead and come back from it. You were both in the same boat, destined to die and knowing everything about it; no longer human, just another game construct. You were orange and she was green. Not the green of your Jade or of the Alpha Jade, a different green. Turtle instead of lime; dim instead of bright. And that really suited her. She wasn't the bright light of the other Jade's she was dream Jade, a dimming of a bright candle. It was fitting, she was dead for over a decade before she was brought back by herself.

 

She wasn't like the Jade you had known or who you currently knew; she was Jadesprite. She was a completely separate person from all the others, not the same as them, completely capable of independent thought allowed to have her own emotions.

 

Maybe that's what you liked so much about her. She was with you and you understood each other, both sprites of a real, living person. She said being dead wasn't so bad, she actually had friends. You wanted to believe her, you knew about the dream bubbles. You wanted to believe that your dead friends were fine together, not being alphas, but just content being with each other. Maybe being dead was less stressful, Jadesprite had seemed perfectly fine with being dead.

 

You wanted to be fine with knowing you were going to die, but you were afraid. You wanted to preserve the Alpha timeline, you didn't want to die like so many other Daves. But when you preserved the timeline, you weren't Dave anymore. You became Davesprite and removed yourself from the four. You became Nannasprite and Jasperssprite and Jadesprite and _everything._ A semi-omnipotent being without the ability to communicate what you knew.

 

You are all freaks. Jasperssprite, fuck. You don't even know with him. Nannasprite is missing an arm and an eye. Jadesprite was a dog. You are a bird. Your wings broke and healed.

 

When everything really started to go to shit, you knew. The session was sick and so, you were sick. You didn't know what to do and couldn't tell what was wrong. You felt it in your very programming, hardwired into your brain and your full orange saturation.

 

Jadesprite knew too. She wasn't going to die. She wasn't going to be alive, either. She was going to cease to exist. You wanted to protect her, but how? You wanted to protect yourself, but how do you stop yourself from dying? You can't stop it, only delay it.

 

You didn't know what to feel when she looked at you, everything about her so green and not Jade. That's what made her beautiful, knowing she wasn't Jade just as you weren't Dave. There was no _real_ Dave or _real_ Jade. Just Dave and Jade and Davesprite and Jadesprite.

 

But when she looked at you, you knew there wasn't Jade ans Jadesprite anymore. She looked at you and, as if someone just turned off a switch, she flickered out of existence. She wasn't alive or dead, she didn't _become_ something or anyone else. It's like she was absorbed, her consciousness reasserted and booted out by Jade's.

 

If an entire person could be erased so easily, their entire being ceasing to simply _be_ , then how could you keep yourself from dying?

 

How could you keep _anyone_ from dying?

**Author's Note:**

> So I guess leave a comment or some kudos and I'm new at this whole "archive of our own thing."  
> One or both of those two things, tell me how this made you feel.


End file.
